Quotes from Edith Wharton

But she saw that his eyes, which were sand-colored like his face, and sandy-lashed, had found another occupation. They were fixed on Conchita Closson, who sat opposite to him; they rested on her unblinkingly, immovably, as if she had been a natural object, a landscape or a cathedral, that one had traveled far to see, and had the right to look at as long as one chose. He's drinking her up like blotting paper. I thought they were better brought up over in England!

The allegation that English girls had no conversation must be true; but theirs was a SPEAKING silence. Their eyes and smiles were eloquent! She hoped it would teach their own girls that they need not chatter like magpies.

To begin with, I hate these new-fangled intermediate meals. Why can't people eat enough at luncheon to last till dinner?

you?—his words overwhelmed him with a realization of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the very moment of attainment. Yes—he had always feared his fate, and he was too honest to disown his cowardice now;

Age seemed to have come down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm.

Lady Brightlingsea considered it her duty to fish out of this out darkness, and drag for a moment into the light, any person or obligation entitled to fix her husband's attention; but they always faded back into night as soon as they had served their purpose.

She knew that Virginia's survey of the world was limited to people, the clothes they wore, and the carriages they drove in. Her own universe was so crammed to bursting with wonderful sights and sounds that, in spite of her sense of Virginia's superiority - her beauty, her ease, her confidence - Nan sometimes felt a shamefaced pity for her.

It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a crowd.

It was amusement enough to be with a group of fearless and talkative girls, who said new things in a new language, who were ignorant of tradition and unimpressed by distinctions of rank; but it was soon clear that their young hostesses must be treated with the same respect, if not with the same ceremony as English girls of good family.

She rose too, not as if to meet him or to flee from him, but quietly, as though the worst of the task were done and she had only to wait; so quietly that, as he came close, her outstretched hands acted not as a check but as a guide to him.

Their bewilderment is so great that, when one of the girls spoke of archery clubs being fashionable in the States, somebody blurted out: I suppose the Indians taught you?; and I am constantly expecting to ask Mrs. St. George how she heats her wigwam in winter.

Sir Helmsley imparted this information in a loud, almost challenging voice, as he always did when he had to communicate anything unexpected or difficult to account for. Explaining was a nuisance, and somewhat of a derogation. He resented anything that made it necessary, and always spoke as if his interlocutor ought to have known beforehand the answer to the questions he was putting.

He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart; since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult for him to live and love uncritically.

La lectura debería ser un acto de creación, como el escribir.

Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them.

Archer, through all his deeper feelings, tasted the pleasurable excitement of being in a world where action followed on emotion with such Olympian speed.

In the rotation of crops there was a recognised season for wild oats; but they were not to be sown more than once.

It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes

it became clear to her observers that she was not quick at shifting her facial scenery. It was as though her countenance had so long been set in an expression of unchallenged superiority that the muscles had stiffened, and refused to obey her orders.

when ''such things happened'' it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of the woman.

Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it so straight up and down—like Fifth Avenue. And with all the cross streets numbered!" She seemed to guess his faint disapproval of this, and added, with the rare smile that enchanted her whole face: "If you knew how I like it for just that—the straight-up-and-downness, and the big honest labels on everything!" He saw his chance. "Everything may be labelled—but everybody is not.

he wonders whether young women raised under such restrictive conditions can ever overcome the disadvantage of deliberately engineered lacunae in their mental, moral, and emotional development. The

Anthropology provides Archer with terminology to expose the ferocity and, more important, the hypocrisy characterizing his prosperous, upper-class social community.

When he thought of Ellen Olenska it was abstractly, serenely, as one might think of some imaginary beloved in a book or a picture: she had become the composite vision of all that he had missed.